Forgetting

Birthdays become annual objects of ridicule
eventually, snapshots of what is hardly recalled.

Photos of a childhood, crazy hair-dos,
vacations, ex-spouses; fashion bungles,
breakdowns, sad unfinished stories,
sappy smiles, harmless goofs that make us
laugh till we choke on the sentimentality-
a humanness only devout misanthropes spurn.

Distracted by the cinematic calendar pages
flipping in my face, I missed yours, didn’t I?

Un-lilylike, to count and spin each day,
worry threads into a tapestry
for which there is no pattern visible
to the naked eye, I become jaundiced and forlorn.

My last birthday was yesterday,
and the day before and the day before that.

Yours was this day, was that day,
and will be until one of us is gone,
run out of pages, numbers, candles,
in the great cleft of memory, passed by.

for DA and AW (oct 24 and 25th)